I wanted to see if the  Six Degree of Separation theory applied to my first sale of a green energy product.

First degree:  Acquired a tutuorial on how to establish Automated Traffic Hubs.

Second degree:  Made contact with a tutorial rep. for more instruction on setting up and ATH.

Third degree:  Acquired a new domain name for the ATH.

Fourth degree:  Chose an affiliate product that fit some specific criteria.

Fifth degree:  Built the ATH by wrapping the ATH blog around the affiliate’s sales page and blog went live.

Sixth degree: First sale.

Ok so maybe I force fed the 6 degrees a little bit, but the theory tends to fit.  The theory being:  ”You are only approximately 6 contacts or events away from your first action to achieve an intended result”. 

It has been proven over and over again the number of persons or events in the process from start to finish tends to be six.  Following is some of my original research on the subject:

In the 1950’s an MIT guy and an IBM guy tried to prove the theory mathematically.   20 years later they still had not proven it.

Then in 1967 a socialogist named Stanley Milgram came up with a way to test the concept.  He called the test “The Small-World Problem”.

He selected, at random, some people in the midwestern United States.  They were to send a package to a stranger.   The only thing they were to know about their target was: his/her name, occupation and general location in the USA.

The instructions to the senders was to send the package to a person they knew and who they thought would be most likely to know the target personally.   That person would do the same and so on down the line until the package was received by the original target person.

The people participating expected it would take hundreds of people in the chain to get the package to the target.

As it turned out it only took an average of 5 to 7 chain links to get it done.  This is when the phrase “Six Degrees of Separation” was coined.

After that there were plays, movies, and games and even websites on the subject.  One of the 10 best websites of 1996 was “The Oracle of Bacon at Virginia”.

There is a whole Hollywood California story about the actor Kevin Bacon on how everyone in Hollywood is only 5 persons separated from Kevin.

The research continues to this day.  In 2001 a Columbia University professor, Duncan Watts, did a huge email test of the theory.   He collected data on 48,000 senders and 19 targets in 157 countries.  Average number of links?  You guessed it, SIX, 6, VI.